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Monday, November 17, 2014

A Readoholic / Foodoholic / Movie-oholic’s Utopia

Everyone must have a different Utopia. And if I had a place
in mine, it would be all filled with food and books and food and books, an
occasionally a movie or two.

When I was in my final year of Engineering in Guwahati, I
“nurtured” the habit of going out to eat every day and for a movie, every
alternate week. When I landed on Mumbai, to my utter delight I found that only
a kilometer away stood the building of my dreams – the Movie Hall. No wonder,
Saturday and Sunday evenings were spent watching the latest show in the Movie Complex.

Eventually, some of my friends and I decided to go for a
movie on every Friday evening, after office hours. Bookmyshow came into picture
and hours were spent deciding on the perfect time to leave office and on
reaching the place before the trailers are shown. As we realized we are
spending a lot of money on our movie-affair we relied on discounts and coupons
– early bird discounts at the hall and Rs. 50-100 off on CupoNation.

Now that ten months have elapsed being on Mumbai, I realized
that watching every other movie might not be a good idea. Movies like Shaadi ke
Side Effects, Bewakoofiyan, Annabelle were nothing but disappointments. I
pledged not to go for a movie without knowing the plot/watching the
trailer/knowing anything about the actors/director. Movies like Queen,
Interstellar, Daawat-e-Ishq, How to Train Your Dragon 2 were good decisions
made.

Of late, the frequency of my visits to the Movie Complex has
lessened. I have opted out from going along with my friends for Telugu (a
language I do not understand) movies unlike before. This may partly be because
I have bought a dangerous number of books recently yet to be read by me.

When I came to Mumbai I brought only a magazine with me. Now
I have more than 30 books kept neatly on the table near my bed, around 70
magazines and 6-8 diaries. I had bought only three books in the month of
January, but eventually I learned about the Book Deals available on the
Internet (of course, CupoNation and other such sites that rescue mere IT
engineers like me) and saved an awful amount of money and bought an awful
number of books. Have I read them? The Signature of All Things is read 1/5th,
Kahlil Gibran 1/20th, Bhagavad Gita 1/10th, The Winning
Way 2/3rd, Her Story ½, etc.

I’ll read them eventually, I know. And there are just so
many more books to read and life is just so short. Phew.

My recent obsession is food. I have always been obsessed with
food but in August-October’2014 I had actually stopped eating a
lot/outside/junk. I have again developed the usual cravings. Every weekend is a
feast. Every alternate day in office is spent ordering food online. The
delivery guys can recognize me. The address of my flat and office is no more a
place unknown them. And now that I sit and write this post on a lazy Saturday
morning, I also open the site for all kinds of food/restaurant deals
on my browser, order an awful lot of food which will, no doubt, be more than
sufficient for me and my roommates, and eat them all up and go for a sleep
dreaming about the Utopia I live in.

Goodreads

I cannot, or rather will not judge a book that touches the strings of my heart and leaves me half-crying and half-contemplating about my own meaningless existence in this vast universe.

The kind of story that makes you want to question the laws of nature, that's heart-ending and beautiful and that makes you irrevocably fall in love with the story and the characters. And you all you want to do is pray for the characters who are left behind to leave a life of mourning and misery and that's when you realize it's just a work of fiction. But not really, because fictions are realities we don't think of, that are happening to people we know nothing about.